Ready to lose weight?

I’ve tried a lot of diets and eating plans over the years and FINALLY found the best eating plan to follow for the woman in her menopausal years. In fact, this is how I fuel my body every.single.day.

Not all eating plans are the same and when your hormones start to shift you have to get extra creative to dial in your eating to see weight loss. Especially in your midsection.

This eating plan is called “Trim Healthy Mama” but you don’t have to be a mama to follow it! 

All you need are the basic guidelines on how to best fuel your body at every meal. Let me walk you through what a hormone-friendly weight loss eating plan looks like.

Are you ready to Get Your Trim On??

I'm here to teach you the basics of how to eat in the best way for the over 40 body.

You’re going to base your meals on fuel types. So it's important that you understand what the fuel types are. 

We're talking carbohydrates, we're talking fats, and we're talking protein. These are called macronutrients. And those are fuel types. You’re going to start learning how to pair and how to separate the fuels. Give yourself plenty of time to learn this way of eating. Because once you start to understand what the fuels are, and how to bring certain fuels together, you'll understand more about weight loss or even weight gain, and how to maintain your weight. 

First things first, you need to get a few things out of your eating plan.

>>No white flour and no white sugar. 

These ingredients are so terrible for your blood sugar. Your goal in eating for weight loss and for health is to keep your blood sugar balanced. When you have white sugar and white flour you get no nutrients whatsoever. Second, it spikes your blood sugar so much that your body has to work really hard to bring that blood sugar back down. And whenever your blood sugar spikes like that, it causes your body to store fat. 

Anytime you have some type of processed carbohydrate, especially without a protein or fat, you're going to spike blood sugar, and you're going to cause your pancreas to work really hard to produce insulin. Insulin goes into your bloodstream and your cells and removes any excess sugar. But when you eat too much of that or too much-concentrated sugar or processed food, the insulin cannot get all of that out of your cells. What's left is stored as fat. 

The goal for weight loss is to burn your own fat. You want to burn through the fuels that you eat and then your own fat.  

Next, separate fuels. You are going to separate carbs and fats. 

What are carbs? 

Carbs are fruits, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, bread, and sprouted bread.

What are fats?

Fats are going to be your oils, butter, nuts, cheese, those kinds of things. 

A meal with carbs would include only a little bit of fat, less than a teaspoon, and be anchored with a low-fat protein. That is called an E (energizing) meal. If you're going to eat fat, you don't want to have a lot of carbs. 

A meal built with fats (Satisfying) would look a bit different. You will start with a protein, add nonstarchy vegetables, and then your good fats like butter, olive oil, ranch dressing, cheese, those kinds of things. You will keep the carbs in the S meal low. 

You have two fuel-type meals that you will switch between your E(nergizing), and your S(atisfying) meal. When I say to separate your fuels I'm talking about separating your fats from your carbs. Your meals will be protein + fat + nonstarchy veggies OR lean protein + carb + veggies (can be starchy).

Now that you have the basic gist of these 2 fuels and how to eat them, let’s look at your blood sugar.

Keeping your blood sugar balanced is not just for weight loss it is for your overall cellular health! 

 To balance your blood sugar you need to eat a meal anchored in protein every 3-4 hours. You can eat either an Energizing meal (lean protein + carbs + veggies) or a Satisfying meal (protein + fats + nonstarchy veggies).

You don't want to go too long without eating because your blood sugar drops. That's not good either. And you don't want to eat too frequently, like every two hours, because your body does not burn through all of the fuel you gave it and can’t burn up your own extra fat. Learn to space your meals, something like breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. Or if you get up super early, it might be breakfast, a little mini snack, lunch, snack, and dinner, but those meals need to be 3-4 hours apart for weight loss. 

These are the basic guidelines for eating a blood sugar-friendly, weight loss inducing, get-rid-of-belly-fat eating plan. 

>>Next week we will take a closer look at the succulent S(atisfying) meal.